


Heartaches By the Number

by maroon



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, F/F, M/M, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence, President AU, RK1K Week, Slavic! North, Slavic!Connor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 12:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17365616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maroon/pseuds/maroon
Summary: Connor has been trained to lay his life down for Markus Manfred; loving him was something he'd had to learn on his own.





	Heartaches By the Number

**Author's Note:**

> i mixed n matched the prompts for day 3: training together and 'you were destined for glory, the honour, and the fame. I was destined for a bullet, to be a gun with no name'. 
> 
> sorry it's so short ! i finished this as i was goin home from work 
> 
> leave me nice comments pls. im not ashamed to ask for them no more ! >:^>

Every morning, without fail, Markus and Connor will be found inside the only gym in their compound, standing opposite each other as they, for the lack of a better term, _danced_. North usually finished up her own work out session by then, but seeing Connor and Markus dance around each other with no words, no blood spilled, puts her in some kind of ease that she doesn’t get elsewhere.

So she sits down and stares; Kara’s going to be picking her up a little bit later so they could have breakfast with Luther and Alice, but for the time being, she likes being a fly on the wall as the two men figure their own shit out by beating the shit out of each other so poetically.

North hums to herself as she tosses back a swig of her water, still watching as Connor practically flies as he winds himself around Markus’ body, grinning carelessly as he brings both of them down. Markus grapples at his waist and pushes him back before they fall, and Connor’s eyes darken, obvious even to North as they twist and dodge in the way of the sun rays.

Markus pushes and Connor moves with it like water, flirting with pain the way North knows Markus likes, deep in that little part of his brain that likes caveman-ish shows of strength. She’s glad he found Connor, in that regard; Connor takes to the role of prey so easily that sometimes North forgets he’s easily the most dangerous person inside this room.

If she strained her hearing, she could hear Markus counting to himself, counting to each and every move he makes, like he always does when he spars with Connor, as if he was memorising a dance.

Outside looking in, it looks mesmerising, like the rise and fall of waves, or barley dancing in the wind, but she knows there’s a turmoil that boils underneath the beautiful superficiality of what Connor and Markus are showing. Both of them has always been _stubborn_ men of the highest proportions. As great as they both are to North, to the world, they’re hardly saints.

Connor sweeps low and hits Markus in the stomach, making the other man grunt and fall back a few steps. He smiles brightly when Markus attempts to immediately get back at him, lunging gracefully.

Bad men they might be to the world, to each other, they’re _good_.

North takes another swig from her water bottle.

After half an hour, Kara comes in the doors and dimples at her, tucking back her long hair and sitting down on the bench where North is leaning against. She’s as beautiful as the day they met, and she grows more beautiful each day.

She’s glad that she met Kara when she did, and above all, she’s glad that Kara is nothing more but a _normal_ woman.

North smiles, because the love of her life is here, and rests her forehead against her wife’s knee, and they both watch Connor and Markus dance.

* * *

Connor is a sentinel behind Simon and Josh, his hands clasped in front of him, and on his back sat his sniper rifle. It’s not every day that he stands with them when they met with people like this, but where’s he’s needed, he’ll go.

Markus is standing in front of the throng of reporters, dressed smartly in all black, as they swear him in as the 48th President of the United States. Though the cold is beginning to settle in earnest, to Connor, it feels like the heat is sweltering, and his gun feels too heavy on his back.

He _doesn’t_ like this, but this is his job.

He’s been trained for this his whole life. To serve who he must, but ultimately, this man and this man alone. His father had served Carl Manfred, and Connor is bound to Markus much like his father was bound to Markus’ father, and his grandmother to Markus’ grandfather—

Connor blinks as North shifts beside him, the smaller woman looking sharp in her dark red suit, her hair plaited tightly against her scalp. She’s to be Markus’ right hand woman, his vice president, and Connor, in many ways, is obligated to lay down his life for her, too. Not only because her wife and little Alice is Connor’s only living family, but because of the simple fact that she’s his _friend_.

She leans and whispers so quietly that her mouth almost doesn’t move, “This is boring,”

He remains straight-faced, looking forward, eyes combing through the crowds for something that could derail this event, or worse, hurt Markus.

“I’m also itchy,” North whines, and Connor’s cheek twitches minutely, the closest he can get to smiling or laughing while being watched by the whole world. It’s a great day; the United States is being put in the capable hands of Markus and North, the cold is beginning to settle, and Connor is performing his job as he’s always been taught to do.

Markus is handsome and righteous as he raises his right hand, smiling at the Chief Justice, a woman Connor knows as _Traci_ _Addams_ , who smiles right back, asking Markus if he’s ready to take his oath.

The crowd watches with bated breath as Chief Justice Addams begins swearing in the man, only seeming to take one collective, deep breath when Markus straightens himself up more than he already is, as if he was squaring up, wearing the title of the 44th President of the United States on his shoulders with ease. The youngest person to ever take on the mantle.

Many people still see him with hatred and disgust in their eyes, but to Connor, he’s never been more perfect, more powerful.  

“I do.”

That’s all he says, and the crowd bursts into raucous cheer, welcoming the revolution that sits behind Markus’ words and belief.

Connor doesn’t move a muscle, but when Markus looks over his shoulder to nod at him, he cracks a smile, nodding back proudly.

This is the man he’ll serve with his life.

* * *

North is running with him today, her hair pulled up into a sloppy looking braid that Connor assumes is done by North’s step daughter, Alice. Markus is holed up in his office, as he always is, nowadays, but he’d ordered Connor to take some time for himself and Connor does, making sure that he doesn’t go over three hours.

Guarding the President, after all, is a full time job that demands each and every single second of his life. Many people would consider that absurd, but it’s in Connor’s bloodline. He doesn’t see anything wrong with having one singular purpose.

After a short while, North suddenly bursts into a dead sprint, prompting Connor to keep up with her, his body immediately high on alert, surveying the grounds to whatever threat has made itself known. He only calms when North laughs, a loud, ringing noise, and tells him to calm down.

“I’m always calm,” He retorts, and North shoots him a look.

“Sure you are, puppy,” She tells him, “But really, calm down. I’m here.”

The way she says it sounds off-putting and uncomfortable to Connor; as if she fully meant to protect _him_ and not the other way around. The Secret Service is giving them a wide berth, and Connor knows it’s mostly out of respect for his capabilities, and North’s unsurprising vehemence to whatever guard detail—that _isn’t_ Connor—placed to watch over her.

Connor nods, nonetheless. If North wants to protect him, then he’ll make her think that she is. There’s no use in declining something like that.

* * *

“Hey,” Markus is handsome in his tan suit, a gag that North and Josh originally had proposed, a homage to the then president Barack Obama. Connor moves to the side, deeper into the shadows of the great Washington Hall. He’s sure no one can see him, as awkwardly as he stands out in his tuxedo, but somehow, Markus always does. “Hors de vois?”

Connor declines with a smile and, “It’s _hors d’oeuvres_ ,”

“I knew that,”

“Have you been saying that this whole night?”

Markus raises an eyebrow and pouts. “Maybe.”

It’s no matter; this night was meant to be merry, to poke fun at the absurdities of what is believed to be the default severity of the White House, to celebrate talent. Connor’s only seen a few when he’d been younger, his father letting him shadow whenever they’d host an event, but none of them was quite as lively as this one, with Markus at the heart of it all, handsome and charming as ever.

“You know, if they danced in sh—uh, _stuff_ like these, I’d ask you,”

Connor turns to him, smiling sadly. It always seems like all Connor could do for Markus is either be a gun for him, or smile wearily at him. Markus isn’t the first person to fall in love with someone along the lines of Connor’s work. He won’t be the last.

“I’d say no.”

This is the man he will lay down his life for, and not any more than that.

* * *

Two years pass before any of the Secret Service really see what Connor is capable of.

One of the things that his father had taught him was a proverb that came from their homeland. _Bez kota mysham razdol'ye._

Without a cat, mice feel free.

He’s glad it isn’t Markus, but he isn’t happy that it’s Kara and North’s daughter, Alice. One moment, she’s being driven home from school, the next, one lone message is being played in the Oval Office, Kara clutching North, her eyes red from unshed tears.

Markus loosens the tie around his neck and tells all of his guards to stand down. Then, he looks at Connor.

Connor nods.

The Secret Service is given the explicit order not to do anything but let Connor do his job, which caused an uproar with many other officials in the office, but ultimately, they realised that this isn’t something they can change Markus’ mind about.

North grips his shoulder tightly. She trusts him, Connor knows this, but she will not accept anything but success. Sometimes, she reminds him of Amanda, the woman who’d raised him to be as effective as he is.

For Amanda, the first woman Connor had served after he had graduated out of the God program, Connor had shed every shred of emotion and humanity to do what she had bid. She wasn’t a good woman, but she was an effective leader, and Connor was proud to serve her.

Three hours later, Connor’s managed to track down Alice’s location, a small home at the edge of Detroit, where she’s being held by her estranged father. He’d wanted his ex-wife, his daughter back. Connor wonders if he knows how he’s damaging it further by doing this.

As small the house is, it’s surprisingly well guarded, and he walks along the neighbourhood, taking stock of the man in front of Todd Williams’ home, his build and the heavy assault rifle he has against his back. He won’t be anything but a sharp nip of air to Connor, but he knows he should approach this with as little violence as possible.

Before night falls, the man is dead and leaning against a tree, looking for all the world as if he was having a noonday nap, and Connor is adjusting his leather gloves onto his hand, standing lazily in the lobby, heart clenching as he hears little Alice tell her bastard of a father to just let her go _home_. There are another two men with their throats slit inside the bathtub, their own penance for working with a man that wants nothing and inflicts nothing but pain.

Todd Williams seems like the kind of man who _loves_ listening to himself.

“Your goddamned _bitch_ of a mother ran away for that, that _dyke_ , because what? Because she’s richer? She promised. She said _for better or worse_ ,” Todd Williams rants, and Alice tugs on the ropes around her small wrists, fat tears running down her ruddy cheeks.

Connor walks in quietly, smiling at Alice and holding up a finger against his lips when she notices him.

He mimes putting a hand across his eyes, and Alice ducks her head down to press against her knees, blocking off her sight. _Smart girl_ , he thinks proudly.

“Now, look at me. She’s fucking _left_ me for fucking _dead_!” He howls, breath coming in laboured. Connor walks up behind him kicks the back of his knees, hearing the tell tale crack of his bones. He howls again, but this time in unrelentless pain. Connor had made sure that he’s facing the wall instead of Alice, so the girl wouldn’t have to see her father’s brain splattered across the walls.

His red eyes look around wildly, but Connor won’t give him the satisfaction of looking his killer in the eyes.

Connor presses his silencer against the back of the man’s head, some sort of sadistic satisfaction overcoming him when Todd Williams tenses, tighter than taut wire, and suddenly drops, as if his strings had been cut.

Before a single beat could pass, he holsters his gun, walks up to Alice and covers her eyes with his gloved hands, telling her all about the newest ultrasound picture Kara had been showing off a few hours before Alice was taken.

When he walks out, dusk is settling and they look just like a father and daughter taking a walk through the neighbourhood.

Todd William doesn’t deserve an obituary, let alone a grave.

Connor takes Alice home and if Connor had been isolated then from the rest of the guard detail, now, he’s treated like a shadow, which he doesn’t mind.

Out of sight, out of mind, after all.

* * *

The first bullet Connor takes for Markus doesn’t kill him, but it feels as if it had.

He’s surprised by the sudden onslaught of _feeling_ when the woman Markus was planning to marry shoots at Markus through Connor, the red of his own blood doing nothing to his tac suit but making it glint against the light. He tackles the woman and shoots her thrice in the head even as Markus screams at him to stop, but Connor _can’t_.

This woman had almost killed Markus.

In Connor’s eyes, he’d given her a mercy.

* * *

Markus still looks as young as ever as they both sit in the Oval Office, and Connor picks out the white hairs in his beard from afar. He’s found multiple ways to entertain himself after years of standing still for so long.

He’s at fifty two white hairs when Markus slams open a drawer and pulls out a bottle of vodka, something so obviously from Connor’s motherland.

He doesn’t speak, but he tosses back a drink and stares at Connor.

Connor didn’t know that he wanted forgiveness from what he’d done, but now that he has it, he stands a little bit lighter, a little bit higher.

* * *

“I’m too old for this, really,” Markus whines as he and Connor walk up to the sparring area, the one they used all those years ago. It’s a rare day; Markus is free from duty and Connor as free as he can be from protecting Markus.

“You’re forty,” Connor says, matter-of-factly. “And you need keep up your training in so you could protect yourself effectively.”

“But that’s why I have you,”

Connor looks at him. In the four years Markus has served, Connor has taken a total of nine bullets for him, one of those damn near to his lung, and the ensuing recovery was nothing short of a miracle brought on by Markus’ power and money.

“Do you?” He asks.

Markus turns somber. “Connor, I—”

Before he could finish, Connor is throwing a sharp left hook that Markus barely dodges, mouth falling agape when Connor hops on his feet, biting his lower lip and looking at him challengingly.

Markus lunges and tries to tackle Connor to the ground, like when they’d been younger, but Connor moves away in time, gripping the sides of the sparring area and pulling himself up.

As they dodge and twist and move in correspondence with each other, Connor wonders if he’s ever felt as peaceful as he does now.

* * *

One of the first things that Connor’s father had taught him is if he were to aim at the head, right between the bottom of the nose and above the upper lip.

But that’s if he wants to show mercy.

 _Dead before they hit the ground_ , his father would say, breath smelling thickly of whisky, and then he’d leave Connor atop of a rooftop with a picture and three bullets.

The next morning, the news would be on, and the President would have one less enemy.

They’d given him a picture. A woman, sweet-looking.

A reporter, they said. Knows too much.

Truth be told, if they’d just said that she was putting Markus in danger, he’d barely need a picture.

Now, he knows too much.

A woman, sweet-looking. She’d sold secrets to the Russian government. She had two children, both living with their grandmother.

Still, he doesn’t hesitate.

The next morning, the news would be on, and there would be pictures circling the internet of a woman, sweetness diminished by the clean bullet hole below her nose and above her lip, and Markus would wake up with one less threat to his life.

* * *

Gavin Reed is a spoiled brat with a fuse so short that Connor _knows_ will be nothing but a hazard and a hindrance to what’s left of Markus’ last term. But as they watch Tina Chen grow more and more popular with the masses, as charming as Markus had been, Connor is saddled with the task of seeing that Reed is the perfect candidate to serve as Chen’s guard, since Connor had opted out of having a successor.

Markus brings him coffee every morning when he trains Reed.

In another life, Connor would press his lips against the man’s and sigh before he faced that day’s work, but _this_ life isn’t another life.

So he smiles at Markus and lets him drag his fingers across his scalp.

* * *

North gets into regular fights with Gavin Reed.

He calls her a commie bastard, and North calls him a greasy inbred hick.

Connor sighs and puts an end to it before it makes the papers.

* * *

Connor still visits his father’s grave. It’s unmarked just like all of their kinds’ are. His own grave will be unmarked, too. He hopes someone will visit him, nonetheless.

“Hank,” he says, kneeling down on the dry grass, “Markus’ term is almost over.”

 _Are you proud?_ He wonders.

* * *

“Insubordinate _boy_ ,” Connor is old enough to say _boy_ without it sounding too out of place, but there’s still youth to him, the kind of immortality that many socialites wish they had.

Gavin Reed is bloody, and he’s wearing it like a trophy, and Connor is disgusted. He only hopes that Gavin Reed would die before they let him graduate the God program.

But it would seem like they have their sights on Gavin Reed taking over Connor’s job for him.

* * *

Markus walks with a refined air; he always has, but now, there’s a slowness to his pace, something that comes with age, though he’s only forty two. He picks up Kara and North’s youngest, calling her _darling_ and telling her she’s grown up so well.

Connor watches him with a wistful smile.

“It’s not too late, you know. You’re still young,” North teases and pinches at his stomach, and Connor blushes, looking away from the handsome man.

He shakes his head, “It’s not my place.”

“Eh,” She waves her hand as if she was dispelling his words from the air, “ _Dvum smertyam ne byvat, odnoy ne minovat_ ,”

He raises an eyebrow.

“It’s worthwhile to take a risk,” She informs him, as if he doesn’t speak the language himself.

“I don’t think that’s what that means.”

“You say that, but which one of us took Russian lit in college?”

* * *

Connor fears the water.

He’s thirty-six, and Gavin Reed had grinned when he shot Connor in the stomach and knee, then promptly tossed him over the Washington Bridge.

He hits the water with barely a splash, his instincts telling him to dive in the most proper form, and blood swirls around him. Or he thinks it does. It’s too dark to see.

Before he settles on the bottom of the river, he wonders if he took North’s words too much to heart.

Dying in the vast waters of the land he calls home. It’s the best unmarked grave he could ever have imagined for himself.

* * *

It’s Simon’s face he first sees when he wakes up.

He blinks, and his body feels heavy, but ultimately better. It would seem that he’s lived to die another day.

“Oh, thank _God,_ ” Simon whispers, pushing back Connor’s wet hair from his face, “Connor, he’s going to kill Markus. He’s killed most of the guards already. I’m sorry,” he pleads, “I’m _sorry,_ ”

Connor stands, and pain shoots up his leg. The only person that can go against a person with Gavin Reed’s training is _Connor_.

So he runs, uncaring of each sharp pain that laces up his body. His body is too heavy, and so are his eyelids, but if he wanted to do one thing before he died, it’s that he wants to _kill_ Gavin Reed.

He thrusts a hand towards the guard running in his direction, “Gun,” he croaks.

The man gives it to him without hesitation, and Connor belatedly wonders if Josh is already weaving a story to the masses. It’s Markus’ last few months. Figures that he’d go out with a bang, but Connor had never thought it’d be like _this_.

When he slams through the door, the sound is overpowered by the sound of a gunshot, and Connor sucks in a breath, wondering if he came too late.

“ _Markus_ —”

* * *

“—will you take this man as your lawfully wedded husband?”

Connor waits, smiling up at Markus, whose hair is grey at the temples, his beard full just like Connor told Markus he liked his beard to be. He’s got his hands on Connor’s hips, helping him stand steadily. His knee, afterall, has never quite been the same.

“I do,” Markus says. Tender. Loving. Filled with an air of truth that Connor’s never heard before.

“And do you, Connor Anderson, take Markus Manfred as your lawfully wedded husband?”

Connor’s never said these words before, and he was raised to not even _dream_ of saying these words.

“I do.”

And Markus sucks in a breath, as if he’s so surprised that even _now_ , in the middle of their wedding ceremony, Connor will say _no._

“Forasmuch as groom and groom have consented together in matrimony, and have pledged their love and loyalty to each other, and have declared the same by the joining and the giving of rings, by the power vested in me, and as witnessed by friends and family, I now pronounce you husband and husband,” Traci Addams smiles, looking radiant with her white hair tinged a silvery blue. She nods at them.

Markus tugs him in by the hips, their lips slotting together seamlessly, and Connor is breathless.

 _This_ is the man he will serve.

 _This_ is the man he will love until he no longer draws air.

And Markus… Markus has pledged the same.  


**Author's Note:**

> i said _**FUCK**_ sad endings
> 
>  
> 
> [my blog](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/rk-1k)


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